iPhone How-To - page 2

Thanks to a settlement in a class-action lawsuit related to Siri and data privacy, most U.S. Apple users can receive up to $100. You just need to fill out an online form by July 2, 2025. (Spoiler alert: That’s today.)

You’re eligible for a settlement if you live in the United States and used Siri between September 17, 2014, (when Apple released “Hey Siri” in iOS 8) and December 31, 2024. You can receive up to $20 per device, for up to five devices, if you’ve ever accidentally triggered Siri in the middle of a private conversation or meeting.

Here’s how Apple got in this mess, how to find out if you’re eligible, and how to submit your claim.

you can turn off autocorrect on your iphone if you want your texts to come across as casual and laid back. psychologically, lowercase writing that isnt punctuated with apostrophes or periods read as more informal and friendly

turning off autocorrect is super-easy. you can even turn off capitalization but leave on corrections for spelling and grammar. see how awesome it is? heres how to do it!!! :)

If you know how to schedule texts on iPhone, you can make sure you never forget to send a reminder, birthday greeting or early morning message for someone in a different time zone. You can schedule a whole slew of texts up to a week in advance, with links, photos, attachments and more, using the iPhone’s Send Later feature.

This can save your bacon if you’re often the type of person to forget to text someone later. And it’s really easy to do, once you figure out how to use the somewhat hidden feature.

iPhone Stolen Device Protection offers increased safety for your accounts and financial information if someone steals your handset and its passcode.

Here’s how to activate the security feature, and — more importantly — why you should do it now.

Apple has a daily crossword and crossword mini that you can play on your iPad and iPhone inside the News app. This feature is available to anyone with an Apple News+ subscription or the Apple One Premier bundle.

I absolutely love playing the crossword puzzles every day. I’m not very good at them, but it’s a fun challenge and it’s a well-designed app.

Here’s how it works.

There’s been another big data leak of over 16 billion records, and that’s a great opportunity to do something you’ve probably been procrastinating on: Replace your website passwords that hackers stole because of some lax security. Fortunately, Apple’s new Passwords app makes it easy to find out which of your passwords leaked so you can change passwords right on your iPhone.

Stay one step ahead by fixing a potentially serious problem now, before something bad happens.

You can see the past week’s weather on your iPhone in the Apple Weather app. It shows all kinds of detailed weather data — not just temperature and rain, but wind, humidity, visibility, pressure and more.

You also can easily see how that info compares to the average weather data to see if this is an unusually heavy winter or a particularly hot summer. Apple Weather even shows you details on the phase of the moon, all in iOS 17.

Here’s how it works.

June is the best time of year to give feedback to Apple on betas for iPhone, Mac, iPad and Apple Watch. Just after the company releases the initial betas of its upcoming software updates, this is when Apple engineers have the most time to address bugs and make changes. And that makes this the optimal time to file an Apple bug report.

It won’t be long before Apple engineers’ task lists fill up through the fall, when the new software will be released. After that, teams are rearranged to make the sprint toward the next year’s updates. So if you have any input, you’d best make yourself heard now.

How do you file a bug report or send in feedback to Apple? Apple made a tool called Feedback Assistant that will guide you through the process. It’s available if you’re running a developer or a public beta of iOS, macOS or iPadOS. Here’s how.

The importance of backing up your iPhone messages is obvious. So, when you want to save text messages from iPhone, why settle for a backup that doesn’t let you access them?

Whether precious conversations with a loved one or vital information for a legal case, your messages deserve to be saved — and, more importantly, easily accessible on your computer.

Apple’s Image Playground is a free app for iPhone and other Apple devices that lets you generate unlimited AI images for free. You can generate images based on your friends, from a text prompt or totally from scratch, in a wide variety of themes and styles.

It’s part of Apple Intelligence, the growing set of AI features that work on the latest iPhones, Macs and iPads. Here’s how to use Image Playground.

If you’re traveling this summer, there’s a neat editing trick to get spectacular shots of landmarks or murals. On the iPhone, you can crop, skew and rotate a photo using the Photos app’s advanced editing tools to make adjustments you might not have thought were possible.

You can quickly fix the perspective or angle a picture was taken from, correct the fisheye distortion on an ultra-wide photo and more. You can also precisely rotate and skew the perspective, for those times when you don’t realize until it’s too late that your shot is slightly to the side or slightly off-center.

The best part is you can can fix it all directly in the Photos app. Here’s how.

Apple’s Game Center service lets you compete with friends and unlock achievements in the games you play. You can see where you rank among your friends — and globally. Achievements will give you a list of missions to accomplish to prove your mastery of the game. You can even play live multiplayer games on all your separate devices using SharePlay.

Up until iOS 10, Game Center existed as a separate app on iPhone and iPad, which made this all easier to manage. And rumor has it that Apple will replace Game Center with the next major version of iOS, to be announced next week at WWDC25.

How do you manage your Game Center account now, on iOS 18? What options do you have? How do you add friends?

Apple’s Freeform app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro is a digital whiteboard you can use to brainstorm or gather ideas in one infinitely scrolling canvas.

You can use Freeform to throw together ideas with a colleague. You could build a presentation using Freeform’s scenes, kind of like using Prezi. Or, you can use Freeform as a drawing app with your iPad and Apple Pencil.

Freeform comes with all kinds of features for adding text boxes, rich links, drawings, clip art, sticky notes, files, photos, videos and more. It’s a great way to build a mood board or connect big ideas.

Keep reading below or watch our video guide to find out how to use Freeform.

You can use Google reverse image search to find a higher-resolution (and higher-quality) original version of an image online. If you’re putting together a presentation, making a YouTube video or writing a blog post, you want the highest quality versions of every image. You might feel stuck if you only have a low-quality picture and you need to fill a bigger space.

Google reverse image search will let you upload a photo and find matches all around the web. You can find out where it’s from to cite the source and save the uncompressed original image. Let me show you how Google reverse image search works.

Adopting a few smart habits can preserve your iPhone battery health, greatly extending the device’s useful lifespan.

By simply tweaking how you use and charge your device, you can keep your battery from going bad, which is often cited as a reason to upgrade to a new iPhone. Just make these easy lifestyle changes, and your iPhone should last longer in the long term.

Keep reading or watch our video to find out how to boost your iPhone battery health.

If you forgot your new iPhone passcode, you can reset it with your old one for up to three days later. This can save you hours of trying to remember the new passcode, or worse, resetting your phone from a backup.

You just have to tap Forgot Passcode? on the Lock Screen after you enter it several incorrect times.

Keep reading for a detailed walkthrough. And don’t worry — if you change your passcode intentionally to keep someone out, you can instantly expire your old one.

You can easily hide photos and videos on your iPhone to keep secret and/or illicit images out of your main Photos library library. Hiding items from the camera roll makes sure nobody except you can see your embarrassing pictures, salacious nudes or old selfies with your ex.

Apple introduced the Hidden photo album years ago in iOS 8. But after Apple redesigned the Photos app in iOS 18, you can no longer find it at the bottom of the Albums tab — because the tab bar is gone.

Here’s what hiding photos does to your iPhone, how you can do stash those incriminating or mortifying pix, and where to find them.

If Apple Translate doesn’t offer the languages you need, you can set Google Translate as your iPhone or iPad’s default translation app. Google’s translation app supports 249 languages, whereas Apple Translate currently can handle only 19.

That broad scope comes in handy if you regularly read materials written in languages that Apple Translate doesn’t cover. And Google Translate is not the only alternative translation app for iPhone.

What does the orange dot on your iPhone mean — and while we’re at it, how about the green dot? These mysterious dots can appear in the Dynamic Island of newer iPhones, or in the upper right corner of older models, near the battery icon.

The dots are part of Apple’s vast system of privacy and security features built into the iPhone. Of course, these privacy features only work if you know what they mean and how to use them — so keep reading for the answer below.

You can save time — and make sure your messages always go out when they’re supposed to — when you schedule email from the Apple Mail app. You can set your mail to deliver at any date or time in the future, whether it’s next Monday at 9 a.m. sharp, in two weeks’ time or even years from now.

If you work with someone in a different time zone, you can schedule messages to arrive just when they start their workday, which is especially helpful if the allotted time is in the middle of the night for you. You can schedule a series of reminders for that one irritatingly forgetful client of yours. Or, if you work remotely, you can try (and risk) prewriting messages to your boss to maintain the illusion of regular work. You can even schedule emails to remind you of an important anniversary, years down the line.

It’s easy to set up. Keep reading or watch our short video.

You use Domain Name System (DNS) servers many times every day, even if you don’t know what they are. You can’t avoid it, and whichever one you use can track where you go on the internet. That’s why you might consider switching to the free DNS servers Surfshark just launched that promise not to track you.

Here’s how to set your iPhone, iPad and Mac to use the Surfshark DNS server. It’s free!

With the new automatic mail categorization in Apple Mail, you can organize your emails and keep your personal inbox less cluttered. It’ll intelligently put all your newsletters, receipts and promotions into separate folders.

If you struggle keeping up with your inbox, this feature is a great way to make your email easier to understand at a glance.

Keep reading below or watch our quick video.

Now that both iPhone and iPad have USB-C ports, transferring video and images between them can be easily done by connecting them with a cable, without mucking about with wireless transfers.

It’s easy, and brings some advantages over AirDrop. Most notably, iPhone Pro 15/16 users get a big speed boost.

Here’s what to do.

Using Apple’s Genmoji, you can create custom emoji when you can’t find the exact right one to express yourself nonverbally. The Apple Intelligence feature generates emoji on the fly based on your descriptions.

Finally, you can enhance your conversations about ostriches or shovels or tissue boxes with your own custom emoji. Or make an emoji that matches your pet, like a white cat or a Pomeranian dog. You can even make emoji versions of people you know.

Here’s how to use the fun new feature.

Managing passwords is and always has been a giant pain. It isn’t the best system, but it’s the system we’ve got. Well, not if Apple can do anything about it. Passkeys are a new system that automatically signs you in to online services using your phone’s Face ID (or Touch ID) or your computer’s password. It’s one less thing to remember; it works without fiddling around with a password manager.

Passkeys aren’t an Apple-exclusive feature. You can bet the technology will be supported no matter what devices you have because all of these companies are part of the FIDO Alliance that created the system … eventually.

Apple fully supports it in iOS 16 and Safari 16 for Mac, as does Google’s Chrome browser on multiple platforms. Android 9 and above supports passkeys via Credential Manager, and Google added passkey support to user accounts on “all major platforms.” Microsoft added support to Windows 11 in the 22H2 update.

Follow along as I show you how passkeys work.